Bedford–Stuyvesant has the largest collection of intact and largely untouched Victorian architecture in the United States, with roughly 8,800 buildings built before 1900.

They contain highly ornamental detailing throughout their interiors and have classical architectural elements, such as brackets, quoins, fluting, finials, and elaborate frieze and cornice banding.

Following the construction of the Fulton Street subway line (A and ​C trains)[6] in 1936, African Americans left an overcrowded Harlem for greater housing availability in Bedford–Stuyvesant.

From Bedford–Stuyvesant, African Americans have since moved into the surrounding areas of Brooklyn, such as East New York, Crown Heights, Brownsville, and Fort Greene.

Since the early 2000s, Bedford-Stuyvesant has undergone significant gentrification, resulting in a dramatic demographic shift combined with increasing rent and real estate prices.

In the second half of the 17th century, the lands which constitute the present neighborhood belonged to three Dutch settlers: Dirck Janse Hooghland, who operated a ferryboat on the East River, and farmers Jan Hansen, and Leffert Pietersen van Haughwout.

In pre-revolutionary Kings County, Bedford was the first major settlement east of the Village of Brooklyn, on the ferry road to the town of Jamaica and eastern Long Island.

For most of its early history, Stuyvesant Heights was part of the outlying farm area of the small hamlet of Bedford, settled by the Dutch during the 17th century within the incorporated town of Breuckelen.

The hamlet had its beginnings when a group of Breuckelen residents decided to improve their farm properties behind the Wallabout section, which gradually developed into an important produce center and market.

Bedford hamlet had an inn as early as 1668, and, in 1670, the people of Breuckelen purchased from the Canarsie Indians an additional area for common lands in the surrounding region.

When Charles C. Betts purchased Maria Lott's tract of land the same year, this marked the end of two centuries of Dutch patrimonial holdings.

In the last decades of the 19th century, with the advent of electric trolleys and the Fulton Street Elevated, Bedford–Stuyvesant became a working-class and middle-class bedroom community for those working in downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan in New York City.

With the help of local activists and politicians, such as Civil Court Judge Thomas Jones, grassroots organizations of community members and businesses willing to aid were formed and began the rebuilding of Bedford–Stuyvesant.

In 1965, Andrew W. Cooper, a journalist from Bedford–Stuyvesant, brought suit under the Voting Rights Act against racial gerrymandering[19] under the grounds that Bedford–Stuyvesant was divided among five congressional districts, each with a white representative.

[21] In 1967, Robert F. Kennedy, U.S. senator for New York state, launched a study of problems facing the urban poor in Bedford–Stuyvesant, which received almost no federal aid and was the city's largest non-white community.

[24] The Manhattan-based Development and Services Corporation (D&S) was established with business, banking and professional leaders which advised and raised private funding for the BSRC's projects.

[24] In the late 1980s, resistance to illegal drug-dealing included, according to Rita Webb Smith, following police arrests with a civilian Sunni Muslim 40-day patrol of several blocks near a mosque, the same group having earlier evicted drug sellers at a landlord's request, although that also resulted in arrests of the Muslims for "burglary, menacing and possession of weapons", resulting in a probationary sentence.

Both the Fulton Street and Nostrand Avenue commercial corridors became part of the Bed-Stuy Gateway Business Improvement District, bringing along with it a beautification project.

[28] Several long-time residents and business owners expressed concern that they would be priced out by newcomers, whom they disparagingly characterize as "yuppies and buppies [black urban professionals]", according to one neighborhood blog.

Surrounding neighborhoods in northern and eastern Brooklyn have a combined population of about 940,000 and are roughly 82% black, making them the largest concentration of African Americans in the United States.

[31] In July 2005, the NYPD designated the Fulton Street–Nostrand Avenue business district in Bedford–Stuyvesant as an "Impact Zone", which directed significantly increased levels of police protection and resources to the area for two consecutive 6-month periods, resulting in a 15% decrease in crime within one year.

[36] A diverse mix of students, hipsters, artists, creative professionals, architects, and attorneys of all races continued to move to the neighborhood.

[40] Improved natural and organic produce continued to become available at local delis and grocers, the farmer's market on Malcolm X Boulevard, and through the Bed-Stuy Farm Share.

In one notable incident, two residents attempted to remove some of the fish, citing cruelty, which sparked a larger debate about the neighborhood’s changing dynamics.

A low-rise residential district of three- and four-story masonry row houses and apartment buildings with commercial ground floors, it was developed mostly between 1870 and 1920,[49][50][51] mainly between 1895 and 1900.

The buildings within the district primarily comprise two- and three-storey rowhouses with high basements, with a few multiple dwellings and institutional structures.

[62][63] Along Atlantic Avenue, on the border with Crown Heights, is the Alice and Agate Courts Historic District, a set of 36 Queen Anne row houses[64] which were designated on February 10, 2009.

[67]: 14 The concentration of fine particulate matter, the deadliest type of air pollutant, in Bedford–Stuyvesant is 0.0081 milligrams per cubic metre (8.1×10−9 oz/cu ft), higher than the citywide and boroughwide averages.

Many public schools are named after prominent African-Americans and, as stated by Nikole Hannah-Jones in The New York Times, were "intended to evoke black uplift".

[98] The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) has four branches in Bedford-Stuyvesant: Bedford–Stuyvesant is served by the New York City Subway's IND Fulton Street Line (A and ​C trains), which opened in 1936.